South Korea Plans Near-Supersonic 'Hyper-Tube Train'

South Korea wants to significantly cut the travel time on its public transport network, so it is looking to create a new train service that can reach speeds of up to 1,000km/h. When you consider the speed of sound is 1,263km/h, you can understand why they are referring to it as "near-supersonic."

The new train, being called a hyper-tube train, is being developed at the Korea Railroad Research Institute (KRRI) in conjunction with Hanyang University and a number of other unannounced research groups. The initial goal is to allow travel between Seoul and Busan in half an hour. Currently that journey takes around two-and-a-half hours.

The hyper-tube train works by floating a pod inside a tube that is a near-vacuum. This drastically lowers friction and air resistance meaning travel can be much faster. For comparison, Maglev trains only reach 500km/h.

If this all sounds familiar, it's because you've probably heard it before under the name Hyperloop, which was initially proposed by Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX. This is just Korea's own take on the idea.

There are many hurdles to overcome before such a high-speed train becomes a reality. Cost is a major concern, as is safety. When you are shooting down a tube at 1,000km/h you really need to have 100% confidence in the tech and infrastructure. If something goes wrong, it's going to go very wrong!

With that in mind, the South China Morning Post reports that KRRI isn't setting a launch date beyond "the not-too-distant-future." However, the viability of the technology will be looked at "over the next three years," suggesting a Korean hyper-tube train won't become a reality until at least the mid-2020s, and even that's optimistic.